Transcript

Mr Kenivale was heading to Fergusson Island from the southern town of Alotau on missionary work for his church.The seven metre craft with an outboard motor had set off on Wednesday afternoon last week, carrying 13 people including a small child and another missionary. About one hour into the three hour journey he looked back to see another boat carrying a gang of about ten masked men. Now safely back home in Suva, Mr Kenivale recounted how the men signalled to slow down and drew alongside.

"Everything happened so fast. They jumped onto our boat with guns. There was actually a machine gun pointing at us with a few other shotguns and the rest of the crew, they held bush knives. They jumped onto our boat and ordered everyone on our boat to go overboard."

Mr Kenivale says with the others he jumped in and swam away trying to keep his bag of valuables dry as the men started to strip the boat of its engine, fuel and passengers' belongings. He says the whole operation took less than ten minutes but because of a mix-up, they escaped alive. Not understanding what the bandits were saying, Mr Kenivale later learnt from his fellow passengers how lucky they'd been.

"They were telling me, that what actually they were saying was they would cut one of us down so that the sharks would devour us. I was just expecting a bullet, that was all. I understood that the way these people acted from the first that they did not consider the will of life."

The gang left leaving the boat-goers adrift in the falling darkness but thanks to a mobile phone the gang left behind, they managed to call for help. They were picked up three hours later and taken to one of the nearby islands. Locals later told Mr Kenivale such attacks are a regular occurrence.

"And people live with this risk. And the way to avoid this risk was to have a higher powered engine and if they know that there are visitors they arrange to be picked up from specific points to avoid these people."

Mr Kenival said he reported the incident to the Alotau police and they apologised.

"What they told me is they didn't have a lot of resources and the people say they have reported many such incidents but the police always say they cannot catch these people."

Mr Kenivale suspected his group was followed from Alotau from where they set out and there appeared to be a network operating in the area. The PNG police have been contacted for comment.